Echoes
by Rauhocereus
Summary: A scruffy collection of mostly pre-league oneshots, each centering on a particular champion. Genres will vary.
1. Omens

The soft flicker of an oil lamp burning low was all that illuminated the room, perched on an old mahogany desk strewn with scrolls, books and papers written in varied and ancient dialects. Leaning on the desk, one arm beneath his head as a pillow, unkempt black hair masking his face, the man breathed deeply and serenely, dead to the waking world. He was dressed simply, in the soft brown robes of a scholar or mage. His skin where visible was pale, the pallor of someone who had been spending a lot of time indoors lately. But the man did not look sick, or weak - the loose fabric of his clothing left a lot to the imagination, but what could be pieced together brought the image of a man not particularly young but not old either, compact and strong, slim but muscular.

A small head, crowned with long black hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, peeked through the heavy oak door of the study. The girl's eyes were a bright leaf-green, curious and sparkling and full of life. She was young, a child still. She padded softly across the room, picking her way through the floor hazards - a huge broken bookshelf leaned against the dusky wood-panelled wall, its contents moved to the floor in neat piles. Her pretty yellow dress grazed her ankles, white floral designs on the hems and long sleeves. Her pale socks were dusty, growing more so as she traversed the room.

She drew up beside the sleeping man, glanced at a piece of paper scrawled with symbols and their key, and looked at him for a moment with a glint of mischief in her eyes - vulnerable, undignified before her - but the look passed and she put her small hands on his broad shoulder and shook him gently.  
>"Father," she called. "Father, wake up!"<br>The man murmured sleepily, and the words could have meant anything. The girl giggled, and renewed her assault on his shoulder. Grudgingly he awoke, sitting upright in his sturdy old chair, stretching out with a great yawn. His tired, dark brown eyes still seemed lost in his dreams for a moment, before focusing on his daughter.

"What time is it, Denira?" His voice was deep, gruff - he still sounded very tired.  
>"It's only lunch time! Did you stay up all night again with your books?" Her voice was cheeky and musical, accusing gently.<br>"Maybe."  
>"Well, you can go back to sleep after you feed me!"<br>He laughed at this, feeling his own stomach twinge a little in hunger. He allowed his daughter to lead him by the sleeve, down the narrow hall, bare but for an old and faded rug. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes with his free sleeve and rolled his stiff neck.  
>He felt a little guilty for leaving his daughter without breakfast, but though she was young she was already quite independant, perfectly capable of fending for herself except when it came to use of the old and tempermental stove. He would make up for it later, he told himself, and would allow himself the day without pursuing his texts. He had been so close, though, before sleep had claimed him - He could feel himself on the cusp of understanding, of finally breaking through the layers of riddle and metaphor and ancient, long-dead tongues. His studying of just four books and supporting material of various scrolls and papers had gone on for months now - they had baffled men much wiser than him, and been regarded as junk by many lesser. He knew otherwise, though - his area of expertise in fact covered these ancient tomes, as well as his own personal burning curiosity. Enigmas wrapped in mysteries, they had frustrated him as much as they had excited him. He loved to learn, to study, to crack codes. Nothing was safe from his curiosity.<p>

No matter how ancient. Or forbidden.

As Denira darted around the kitchen, hastily cleaning up the mess left by who knows what she'd been up to, he went through the motions of preparing a pot of soup with the remaining vegetables from the pantry - almost bare, he noted, he would have to go shopping tomorrow - leaving it to bubble and cook. It would take too long for the girl, he knew, and so he waved her out from underfoot in the pantry where she had found and stolen a wheatcake and reached up to the high shelves to take down a loaf of crusty home-baked bread, wrapped in a white cloth. He tore it into quarters, and gave her one, putting aside the rest on the old stone counter beside the stove. As if remembering his own hunger he decided against this and took another quarter for himself.

They sat together at the wooden table, older than both of them, but strong and faithful. They did not converse much, except for the occasional burst of idle chatter from his daughter and his own replies, but the silence when unbroken was comfortable and companionable. The man had brewed a pot of sweet fruit tea - an Ionian delicacy he'd taken a liking to on one of his travels - and had poured for both of them, steam curling from the drink and filling the air with a pleasant scent.

Denira's mother Fennel had died while she was still a baby. The loss still hurt, even seven years later, but he had buried his sorrow for her sake and did what he could to raise her alone. The girl remembered very little of her, but he did, and he would be reminded of her whenever he looked at his daughter. She'd inherited his dark hair and pale skin, but aside from that she was almost a perfect copy of her mother - green eyes, a gently upturned nose, high cheekbones. Light and dainty. She'd have the boys of the village wrapped around her finger when she grew older.

His work demanded more and more of his time, but for all she looked like her mother, Denira had inherited much of his personality and did not mind her own company. He felt bad spending so much time in his study, but his daughter never complained, encouraging him or lightly chiding at worst. Besides, she was out more than she was in, running amok in the village with her troupe of scruffy friends - who were NOT allowed into his study, especially after the incident with the enchanted lodestones - and enjoying playing out on the village green. She was doing well in school, bright and quick, resourceful and brave. He loved her dearly, and was proud of her, though his nature would not let this be plainly seen.

She was also beginning to show signs of a mage.

Once upon a time, before he met her mother, he had been a wandering mage himself, forever in search of forgotten crafts and buried powers. Not for the enhancement of his own, mind - he was a scholar at heart and simply wished to preserve the knowledge of these forgotten, forbidden magics. To know them as they were once known, to understand. It had taken him to dark places, and less dark places. He had developed quite a sense for magic potentiality and depth over the years. And now his daughter was positively oozing it.

He'd been hearing stories from the villagers lately as well, when he deigned to go among them. The eyebrows of another girl with whom it was known she had an intense rivalry had been singed clean off her face one day. She'd somehow managed to coax dozens of frogs from the nearby river into her school, causing chaos. Sometimes, odd things would happen around her that could not quite be explained.

Small acts, as an acorn was tiny next to the tree it would become. But an untrained mage who didn't know their own power was a disaster waiting to happen.

Ah, but he _wouldn't_ allow any disaster. He wasn't much of a teacher, more of an eternal pupil himself, but he would do all he could to teach his daughter to rein in her strength and harness it. Wouldn't do for the warlock and his witch-child to be hunted from their homes with pitchforks and torches, now. Maybe he would send her to a school for mages - just as he had been, when his powers awakened and he accidentally exploded his mother's favorite armchair while trying to kill a wasp that had blundered through the open window. The memory brought a smile to his face, and he rubbed his strong jaw with his hand absentmindedly. She would protest - and it would hurt to make her go. No... He would not _make_ her go. But he'd make sure she understood that it was probably for the best. It'd been an... interesting part of his own life, and he knew she'd benefit.

"Hey!", His daughter's voice startled him from his pondering.

He made a small noise of questioning, warming his hands around his mug, and she leaned across the table. Her face suddenly looked much more serious.  
>"What's Icathia?"<p>

He tensed, the shock clear on his face. His daughter frowned at his reaction. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but could not find words.

Icathia. Icathia... The name had haunted his dreams, flitted through his books like a ghost of words, never where he looked, but always over the next page, in the next cypher or stanza or sentance. It promised power and understanding. And yet, he realized with an odd, detached feeling, he knew nothing of it. It was what he had sought but not yet found. A word he hadn't read yet. An answer to a question nobody asked.

So how did his daughter know of it?  
>"Where... How do you know that word?" There was no point saving face - his tone carried his surprise. His brows knit together thoughtfully, and the girl scuffed her feet against the smooth wooden floor.<p>

"I wasn't being nosy! I just, I saw it in one of your books. Well, I think I saw it. It's hard to explain. It's something important, isn't it? I wasn't reading your books, it was on the pages you were lying on when I went to wake you!", Denira replied, curiosity overwhelming her. As if to silence herself from saying more, she took a fast gulp of her tea, pulling a pained face as it burned her tongue and throat.

Now, that just raised more questions than it answered.

"I have no idea. Can you show me where you saw it?"

It was her turn to be shocked. A frown marred her delicate face. How could he have missed it? Still, she nodded, excited that she knew something he didn't, for once. She darted like a minnow from the kitchen, before he could follow, and he heard her trip over something in his study with a curse that made him raise his eyebrows - he would scold her for that later - and returned with the heavy book splayed open at the same place he had fallen asleep on, struggling to hold it with both hands but placing it gently on the table as if well aware of its pricelessness. She hopped up onto the seat and pointed to a small passage at the bottom of the left page, faded with the ravages of a thousand years, but still barely legible in the hand-wrought script of a language the name of which was long-lost.

He read the words again. He couldn't understand them. And that in itself was odd, because it was written in the same script as the other page, and that he could read just fine. He wracked his memory, what was blocking him from understanding? There had been spells on this book, he remembered taking them apart, peeling back the layers of defence. He thought he'd got them all - it wasn't the first time he'd dealt with books that had been "locked" in such a way by their original owner. Usually, he could sense them before he even touched the cover. But he didn't feel anything, and again why did his daughter see clearly? She shouldn't even understand what the symbols were!

The man was baffled.

"Denira... I can't read it. I think there's something that keeps me from reading it. Can you copy the passage for me? Do not speak the words aloud, they might be dangerous."  
>Denira nodded solemnly, as her father fetched her a piece of paper and a pen. Her eyes took on a faraway look that made him frown, worried, as she scrawled down in messy handwriting what she could make of the symbols, translating them into letters which were not so foreign to her eyes. Penmanship had never been the girl's greatest strength, but he could not complain.<p>

_Yioglthr thgic thrucaty ilg Icathia gth uaoyg iyg tlu itoh Icathia lrurh gtoh uayg iyg yiglth ulth icau gh ulryig gh ray girhy tlu itoh hr tacgiy catogth ilog choi glth aithy_

That, he could definitely make sense of. It was a very old language, known only from scattered remnants found in the deserts of Shurima. Only four people in the entire world could read it - he was one of them. It was speculated to be the mother tongue of a race from the wastelands on the east coast of Valoran, sitting between the great Barrier Mountains and the wilds of Kumungu. It was a land nobody ever travelled to - the place was dead. Dry, empty, and desolate. No wildlife. No plants. No people. Perhaps once it had been habitable, but not for many centuries now. Nobody had ever explored the land to any extent. There'd never been a reason to.

Well, he might have just found a reason. He was not a man who believed in coincidences.

"Thank you, Denira. How do you feel about staying at your Aunt's for a while? I may be going on a trip."

"To Icathia, father?" Her eyes met his, solemn jade to excited mahogany. She didn't like it when he left her. But Aunty Meg was always good to her - and she did a lot of baking. Her mother's sister had never been able to have children of her own, but had always longed to - she lived in the village and had demanded to help with her care when Denira was born. Struggling with the grief of losing his wife, and juggling his research with being a single father, he'd welcomed the help. Meg had inserted herself neatly into Denira's life - she would never replace her mother, but her support was a major help. Their personalities often clashed, but his respect for her was untainted.

She'd stayed with her a few times before, when her father went on "trips" - and came back, sore and weary, but triumphant, often carrying a precious cargo of books or notes or relics. Sometimes he told her all about his travels - she'd perch on the arm of his chair while he rested and spoke, listening raptly with eyes full of wonder. Sometimes he only told her small amounts. Her curiosity burned, and she worried that he put himself in danger. But he always came back.

Always.

"Yes," Kassadin said, placing a hand on his daughter's shoulder in a comforting gesture. "To Icathia."

The soup boiled over, forgotten for the moment.


	2. Catharsis

**EDIT_:_**(Don't write while drunk, kids. Muh spellings!)

* * *

><p>The plains beside the river were fragrant with the scent of night-blooming wildflowers. She breathed the cool dusk air in deeply, gazing up at the bright constellations she could not name, but which were comforting in their familiarity all the same as they peeked beyond the veil of fast-fading twilight. The sun was no longer visible over the distant hills, the last radiant glory of its light reduced to a weak, pale amythest wash over the landscape, casting almost no shadows.<p>

The long, wild grass beneath her tired body was damp with dew but she could not quite bring herself to roll closer to her campfire, onto clearer ground strewn with bare patches where her few belongings lay in a lazy pile upon the thin sleeping mat she had not yet bothered to unroll. She lay enjoying the peace, the silence, an almost reverent look on her face as her eyes sought something further than the sky, further than the stars. As the night shrouded the land at last, and the twinkling of stars was joined by the gentle, fleeting lights of fireflies, the woman slid off into a peaceful and dreamless sleep.

When she awoke it was dawn, and she somewhat regretted not choosing better ground on which to lie - her thick travelling cloak which she had unconciously twisted herself into as she slept had kept her relatively warm, but her joints ached and her feet in their battered leather sandals were quite numb from the nipping of the night air. The woman stretched, long and laboriously like a cat, and swept her unruly pale hair from her face. The sunrise was magnificent, and the beauty of it was not lost upon her, the hazy sky painted a soothing rosy pink, shot through with streaks of pure gold and orange as the sunlight illuminated the wispy clouds like a wildfire in the sky. She took a few moments to admire it as she went about her buisness - burying the long-dead embers of her fire and scattering the rocks that contained it, stowing her things into a sturdy leather pack which she slung beneath her cloak and over her shoulder.

Much more reverance she paid to one particular item, however. Wrapped in a heavy oilcloth that smelled of smoke and earth, an object almost as wide as she was at the waist, and longer than her arm. It looked very much solid and hefty, but she took it from its resting place on a bare patch of brown, sandy earth as easily as if it was a roll of paper. She took several long straps of leather, belted together into two continuous lengths, and formed a makeshift harness. This she attached to a thick, heavy belt that hung loose around her hips and was etched with intricate patterns much like ivy. The wrapped object was also soon concealed beneath the folds of her cloak, no more than a vague idea of a shape that could sometimes be seen when the heavy material swayed against and around it.

She brushed some specks of dirt from her pale, faded tunic and set about filling a tough old waterskin from the river, everything else having been squared away. She swiped away some tiny biting flies that rose like a wisp of smoke from the grasses as she leaned into the river, the cold of the merrily gurgling water refreshing on her tanned skin, soaking through the bandages that bound both her forearms. She secured her waterskin at her side and drank from the river with cupped hands, then with a few splashes of water washed her face. The piping alarm call of a bird, the species of which she did not recognize rang out across the windless air - suddenly very alert, she paused to listen. Few travellers came this way, and she did not wish to attract the attention of bandits or other such undesirables. But, she heard nothing else as she turned her head this way and that, listening like a fox does for threats. Peace settled again on the plains. At the very edge of her distance she could see something - perhaps a deer, across the river, but it did not concern her and the sentiment was returned, as it lowered its head to the ground as though grazing.

It was time to go, so she straightened up and fell into a brisk walk, headed for the distant hills, the sight of which brought a lump to her throat and thoughts which made her shiver.

The closer she got, the less life she saw. There were no birds, few insects, and no ground-dwelling wildlife either. The ground grew rockier, dustier beneath her feet, and the slopes steeper. She did not stumble, picking her way carefully up the hill like a mountain goat. It was tiring work, however, and she sweated profusely beneath her travelling cloak. The sun was at its zenith now, and beat down with a merciless heat that dried the woman's mouth and burned what little skin was exposed to it. The clouds that had been present that morning had dissapated or drifted away, so there was nothing to dull it, or shelter her. She felt quite vulnerable on that hillside, truth be told, but she pressed on doggedly until she crested the hill and found herself looking down on sharp cliffs and canyons, carved over millenia by rivers long run dry and scouring winds into an intricate network of passages and valleys and steep inclines.

One valley in particular sunk deeply into the earth like an old wound, yawning open for miles across the landscape, half eclipsed in shadow. The earth there had a strange mottled tinge, but it was not from foilage or anything alive.

The woman shuddered, as she knew all too well what tinged the parched soil.

But as much as it unsettled her, she knew this was her destination, and that she must press on, down into the jagged maw of Couer Valley.

Her feet hit the valley floor with a crunch as she hopped off of a small ledge, the dirt forming a flaking crust. When it rained in the mountains nearby, the valley would sometimes flood, but no water had touched this earth for years now and the ground had split and cracked under the glare of the sun and the weight of time. She shielded her eyes against the light as she looked around, stopping for a moment to catch her breath. Far down the valley, something glinted in the sunlight, unfamiliar but beckoning. And very close by, scattered shapes lying in the dust, which the woman decided to investigate first as she took a long swig of her waterskin.

The heavy wooden beams which had once formed a terrifying juggernaut of war were now seperated and half-rotted. Rusted plates of iron, streaked with corrosion, patched the joints where the wood was joined with heavy rivets and formed an unrecognizable mass that might once have held mechanisms and fine workings, but now was a decayed metal shell. The ground around it seemed to shrink away from it, the main body of the thing lying in a shallow pit, the earth stained with a sickly greenish hue around it. The earth directly beneath it looked as though it had once boiled, bubbles frozen in dirt and dust and time.

The sight of the broken-down Melter brought back horrific memories. The woman wrapped her arms around herself, arms which throbbed with a phantom pain, but forced herself to examine the object without touching it. She would not touch it, nor the ground on which it lay, and never would for all the gold in the world. Her mahogany eyes were dark, clouded, seeing not just the husk of the war machine but also what it once was, what it once did. She turned away suddenly, a shadow of agony passing over her downturned face, and stood with her back on it. She almost didn't see the pale, white shape half-buried in loose dust and dirt - as bland and shapeless as the rest of the valley floor it seemed, until she registered the shadows upon it. The cracks, which spread down across the empty sockets, and the permanant grin of off-white teeth biting into the dust.

A vicious satisfaction came over her. Good. If that was the machine's operater, good.

She walked off, towards the tantalizing glint, taking note of everything else that stood out to her in the valley. Many other bones were visible, and the woman could see weapons sunk into the dirt, a sword lying in the shelter of a bleached ribcage, an axe still grasped in skeletal fingers. The woman made a small, strangled noise as she noticed, horrified, that many of the skeletons seemed to have been disintegrated in places, melted, sloughed away. She forced herself to look, long and hard, a bitterness welling in her chest as she did so.

She wondered how many of them had been men and women known to her, how many had been enemies. Here and there a piece of battered, corroded metal lay, armor that had survived the teeth of time. She turned over one such piece with her foot, and clenched a fist to her chest. The motif was faded, but still legible - a stylized, glaring skull on a background of green-tinged metal. Her eyes were hard and cold, not betraying the guilt and turmoil she felt.

She remembered it all too well - how could she ever forget? And how could she have survived, choking in the dust beside her comrades and opponents as the vile chemicals ate through the flesh of her arms, when nobody else of her company did? Guilt at having survived ate at her, like poison in a still-bleeding wound. By all rights her bones should be resting in this old battlefield alongside these other fallen soldiers. She knew it was nothing but dumb luck that saved her, not the strength she had once taken so much pride in, nor her own cunning. This as much as anything festered in her mind. All her life, she had been told to live by her own strength as law. And she had, gladly, and proudly, for she was strong and there was little she desired and could not take.

And yet, at the behest of her own nation, the nation that was founded on strength and pride - that strength had been cast aside like a broken toy, that law had been abandoned in what she saw as the most cowardly manner possible. To die in war was an expected and comfortable end to any Noxian - the strong would triumph over the weak, and would in turn be triumphed over when they had lived long enough and their strength had faded. To be strong and win your battles was great, to be strong and die at the hands of someone stronger wasn't much worse, given you put up a damn good fight - and every Noxian tirelessly strived to be that stronger person, testing their power and will against everyone they could all through their lives. The Zaunite mercanaries, with their hateful chemicals and wicked machines of terror, had stripped that honor from their war, had soiled the name of Noxus by toppling that proud balance and law on its head. The strong died without a chance to show their strength, died in writhing agony beside the weak, when they should have triumphed. The natural order was upset, the battle pointless, pride all but forgotten.

And what for? How was a battle won when both sides died, and only the borrowed hands of another nation walked away alive?

It still brought a rage to her, even as it brought sorrow and pain. The weight of hundreds of lost souls bore down upon her heart, was carried in the swing of her arms, echoed in her voice. She would never forget this disgrace, this betrayal. In just one day and just one night, this woman had lost everything. But she still had her pride, she still had her strength, she still had her values - though time and worldly experience had tempered them somewhat. Noxus had fallen to a new low, and she would never again bend her knee to such shameless masters. She wondered with a humorless smile how many of her fallen bretheren would have shared her sentiment, had they lived. She would bet anything that almost all of them did.

The woman stood silent, vigilant. She looked, unseeing, still hearing the echoes of battle even though the air was deathly silent. A gentle wind picked up, blowing down the valley and ruffling her hair, startling her from her reverie. It brought dust and little refreshment from the heat, and reminded her of the dry, stale feeling in her mouth. She drank from her waterskin again, careful of the amount left. The river was half a day away, but she did not wish to retrace her route.

She remembered the strange glint she'd seen down the valley. Curiosity drove her to keep walking on, though her mind wheeled with dark thoughts and darker memories. She had never quite allowed herself to grieve, to mourn her comrades, her honor, her past life. It had weighed heavily on her over the years, and today she had come here in an attempt to lighten the load on her spirit. She didn't quite know how she would do that, though. So she walked, and she walked, and walked on, taking in the grim scenery solemnly, stopping every now and again as things caught her eye.

It was much further away than she thought, and the sun was starting to descend, bringing a blessed relief from the heat as the skies lost some of their fire and the shadows grew longer. The thought of spending the night in this forsaken place was not a pleasant one to her - but something compelled her to stay, to remain in this place of lost souls and echoes.

She drew her cloak tighter around herself, shivering as if from cold. But she was strong. She would not fall to dust and shadows and memories. She was strong, stronger than those who had once commanded her - she would not allow their crimes to crush her spirit. She would not surrender to memory and shame. Not even if they hunted her down and tore her last breath from her lungs with the hateful steel of their assassins like the cowards they were.

As she drew closer she realised that the glint of sunlight was actually the light catching the top of a large, polished stone carved with typical Ionian designs and what could be words, still too distant to be legible. A war memorial - The Ionian Mantle of Decorum was displayed in proud relief on the monument, one of the highest honors a soldier could recieve.

Noxians did not honor their dead with any more than gravestones. Those who committed great deeds of strength and glory were immortalized in song or legend, but war memorials were a foreign concept, as a soldier who did not return home was simply a soldier who was not strong enough, and therfor not worth commemorating. Or at least, that was the theory - once. Now, the woman knew differently.

Still, she wondered at the great, engraved monolith. She had seen war memorials before, but never expected to see one in this tainted place. The Ionian militants who died here were not trained soldiers, though she knew them for a formidable and ferocious foe. That too was a strange concept for the woman once, for in Noxus every child is trained from birth to kill, with few exceptions. Not all chose to stay as such, but a minimum period of four years serving in the army was mandatory to all citizens. It was a rite of passage to adulthood, which some - like the woman herself - undertook far earlier than others.

The Ionians had fought viciously, laying a clever trap for Fury company, even being so bold as to use a child as bait. Seeing the girl stumbling, apparently shell-shocked, from the field of fallen bodies, only for those bodies to rise around them - it was not something she'd been prepared for. Riven felt she should have died that day - not destroyed by chemicals, but on the end of an Ionian sword, preferably after taking half of them with her. She had to admire their strength and ruthlessness, for a nation of technical pacifists. By all rights they should have won that fight, as the next nearest company was far from them and they were outnumbered heavily. She would not have begrudged them their victory - they were just trying to defend their lives, after all, and she was just trying to follow orders.

Nobody, not the Noxians and not the Ionians, had deserved what happened that day.

She felt a wave of tiredness come over her, even though she'd slept well. Her food supplies had run out the day before yesterday though, as her stomach reminded her every now and then. Hunger gnawed at her painfully and her energy levels were lower than normal as a result.

She was in the stone's shadow now, though, and it drew her like a moth to flame. It was a large monolith wider than it was tall, tapering off halfway up to a triangle point. Sweeping waves and the branches of a tree, blossoms falling in an invisible breeze, were rendered artfully onto the face of the memorial around the sides. And then a neat, thin border around the etched text in the centre - Most of it was written in traditional Ionian, of which the woman understood almost nothing. Some of it was in the common Valoranian tongue though, and this she traced with calloused fingers.

She was surprised by what she could read. Added on at the bottom, in slightly smaller etching below the Ionian but above the list of names, was a small paragraph that made her eyes widen and a lump form in her throat.

_Also remembered here are the fallen members of Fury Company of the Noxian Army - we are all brothers and sisters in death. Though their bones lie on the earth, may their spirits may find peace in the afterlife, and may they be judged fairly._

She would never have expected such compassion from an enemy with whom her people had so cruelly and fiercely fought. To honor the invading force on a war memorial for their own fallen - Ionians were full of surprises. The gesture touched the woman deeply, however strange it seemed to her. She wondered who had suggested it, and how it had initially been recieved.

She felt guilt for a wide range of reasons, but not usually for killing - that mark, she reasoned, was more on the conscience of those who commanded her rather than she who simply carried out orders. She had never killed needlessly, though she knew some of her kin did. She enjoyed fighting - it was her whole reason for being, but killing was a chore to her, something she did simply because it was required of her.

So why did she feel ashamed now?

She was not an overly emotional woman. She had her occasional flares of temper, and found pleasure in simple things, but she kept her buisness and her feelings as seperate as possible. It was hard to carry on, otherwise. But as she blinked heavily, droplets stained the dust below her, and before she even registered her tears she was kneeling on the plinth, sobbing quietly, fist pressed to her lips to muffle her cries. She was alone though, not a soul for miles - and as this occured to her, she allowed herself the mercy of dropping all pretenses and letting out her grief in earnest. She had never cried like that before, but once she started she could not stop - with a harsh yell, face upturned to the darkening twilight and contorted in agony, she surrendered to her melancholy.

Curled in on herself with her back to the memorial and her arms around her knees, wrapped in her cloak as if to hide herself from the world, she eventually cried herself to sleep beneath the stars.


End file.
